Parallels with 9/11

Northwoods, Pearl Harbor: every war needs an excuse

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted,
it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This
is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned
nothing from experience."
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

http://coat.ncf.ca/articles/links/how_to_start_a_war.htm
This new version was published by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade
(COAT) in issue #50, of Press for Conversion! (January 2003). For information
on obtaining a copy of that issue, which contains 40 pages of articles
by numerous authors on US war pretext incidents, between 1846 and the
present, please see the information after this article.

Going to War: Unraveling the Tangled Web of
American Pretext Stratagems (1846-1989)
By Richard Sanders, coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade,
and editor, Press for Conversion!

For more than a year now the U.S. has seemed on the verge of attacking
Iraq. All that is stopping them is their inability to find a credible
pretext for war.
Throughout history,
war planners have used many forms of deception to trick their enemies.
Because public support is so crucial to the process of initiating and
waging war, the home population is also subject to deceitful stratagems.
Creating false pretenses to justify war is often a major step in gaining
public support for such deadly ventures.Like schoolyard
bullies who shout 'He hit me first!', war planners know that it is irrelevant
whether their rival really did 'throw the first punch.' As long
as the attack can be made to appear unprovoked, the aggressor can 'respond'
with force. Bullies and war planners are experts in the art of
taunting, teasing and threatening. If enemies cannot be goaded
into 'firing the first shot,' it is easy enough to fabricate lies about
what happened. Such lies are used to rationalize schoolyard beatings
or genocidal wars. Such expedient
artifice has no doubt been used by every military power in history.
Roman emperors had their cassus belli to conceal real reasons for waging
war. Over the millenia, although weapons and battle strategies
have changed greatly, the deceitful strategem of using pretext incidents
to ignite war has remained remarkably consistent. In examining
this history, certain patterns repeatedly emerge, a distinct modus operandi
is detected, and the institutionalized, criminal ploys of war planners
can be seen.Perhaps the
most commonly used war pretext device is an apparently unprovoked enemy
attack. Through history, such "attacks" have been deliberately
incited, completely fabricated, allowed to occur, or engineered and
then blamed on the desired enemy. The event is then exploited
to arouse widespread public sympathy for the victims, to demonise the
attackers and to build widespread support for military "retaliation"
among the general population, as well as among politicians and other
leaders of public opinion. War pretext
incidents, in themselves, are not sufficient to spark wars. Rumours
and allegations about the tragic events must also spread throughout
the target population. Constant repetition of the official version
of what happened, helps to spawn dramatic narratives that are lodged
into public consciousness. The stories then become accepted without
question and legends are fostered. The corporate media is central
to the success of such war propaganda. Politicians rally people
around the flag, lending their special oratory skills to the call for
a military "response." Demands for "retaliation"
then ring out across the land, war hysteria mounts and, finally, a war
is born.
Every time the U.S.
has gone to war, pretext incidents have been used as triggers to justify
military action. Later, the conventional views of these controversial
events have been challenged and exposed as untrue. Historians,
investigative journalists and others, have cited eyewitness accounts,
declassified documents and statements made by the perpetrators themselves
to demonstrate that provocative incidents were used to stage manage
the march to war.
There are dozens of
other examples from U.S. history besides those exposed in these pages.
During the Cold War, dozens of covert and overt wars were promoted using
specific pretext episodes. However, the crusade against communism
was the generic backdrop for all rationales.
As the Cold War wound
down, the "War on Drugs" was developed as a new cover story.
Lurking behind U.S. lies about wanting to squash illicit drug production
and trafficking, are the actual reasons for financing and training so
many right-wing, military governments. The "War on Drugs"
pretext has been used to boost counter-insurgency operations aimed at
destroying those opposed to U.S. corporate profiteering. The CIA has
not only used drugs as a pretext to arm regimes that themselves profit
from illegal drug sales, it has also financed many of its own covert
wars using the highly lucrative trade in heroine and cocaine.
The latest thematic
pretext for war is the so-called "War Against Terrorism."
It is vitally important to expose this latest attempt to fraudulently
conceal the largely economic and geostrategic purposes of war.
By unraveling the intricate web of pretenses woven to deceive the public,
we can begin to reveal how corporations are the main benefactors of
war. By throwing light on repeated historical patterns of deception,
we can promote a healthy skepticism about government and corporate media
yarns that are now being spun to promote wars of the future.
If asked to support
wars so that wealthy elites can safely plunder the natural and human
resources of foreign lands, people would likely 'just say no.' Therefore,
over the millennia, war planners have developed a special martial art
- the creation of war pretext incidents. These elaborate
webs of deceit are woven to create the appearance that wars are fought
for just, moral and humanitarian reasons.
The knowledge of how
people have been repeatedly tricked into going to war, is like a vaccine.
It can be used to inoculate the public with healthy doses of distrust
for official, war pretext narratives and other deceptive stratagems.
Through such immunization programs we can help to counter our society's
susceptibility to "war fever" and, hopefully, prevent the
next bout of war from infecting us.

War on Terror:
The Police State Agenda
By Richard K. Moore
How had the US government come up so quickly with such a comprehensive
and coordinated response? How had they decided within hours that an
extended War on Terrorism was the appropriate action? How did they know
that $40 billion was the exact amount needed? And then as background
reports began to appear, my suspicion deepened. It turns out that the
airlines were already in deep trouble, before the attack. And the US
had other reasons to go after Afghanistan, having to do with oil reserves,
and pipeline routes. And there had been earlier signs that the social-security
funds might be raided for other uses. And still, no actual evidence
had been produced linking Bin Laden to the attacks.
The whole scenario began to fit a very familiar pattern, a pattern that
has characterised American history from its earliest days. This led
me to a quite different analysis of the events than we were being fed
over the mass media. I am not claiming that this alternative analysis
is correct, I offer it only for your consideration. ....
US History – A Series of Suspicious Warpath ‘Incidents’
As we look back at history, we find that every time the US has entered
into a major military adventure, that has been enabled by a dramatic
incident which aroused public sentiment overwhelmingly in favour of
military action. These incidents have always been accepted at face value
when they occurred, but in every case we have learned later that the
incidents were highly suspicious. And in every case, the ensuing military
action served some elite geopolitical design.
Consider, for example, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which gave President
Lyndon Johnson an excuse to begin major escalation of the Vietnam War.
Supposedly, in that incident, a North Vietnamese boat launched torpedoes
in an attempt to sink an American warship. It is now generally accepted
by historians that the attack did not in fact occur, and that Johnson
had been preparing to escalate all along.
One of my correspondents on the Internet summarised a portion of the
history this way:
“The US Government lied to the American People about the following
events. Each of these incidents led the United States into War....
“1898…THEY LIED about the sinking of the battleship Maine.
(Spanish American War)
“1915…THEY LIED about the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania
(World War I)
“1941…THEY LIED about the attack on Pearl Harbor. (World
War II)
“1964…THEY LIED about the Gulf of Tonkin affair. (Vietnam
War).”
In the media coverage of the recent WTC attack, the comparison with
Pearl Harbor has been frequently raised. Thousands of American troops
were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and thousands of American
civilians were killed in the attack on the WTC. In both cases the American
people responded (quite understandably) with deep shock and outrage.
In both cases, overwhelming public sentiment was for retaliation, and
for giving the President total support for whatever course he chose.
In 1941, as now, any suggestion that the US government knew in advance
of the attacks, and could have prevented them, would have been met by
angry disbelief by almost any American. Nonetheless, the evidence now
seems to favour the view that President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
did know about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, and that he could
have mounted an effective defense.
We now know that elite US planners, during the period 1939-1941, had
come to the conclusion that the Japanese conquest of Asia had to be
stopped. The planners determined that Southeast Asia, in particular,
was critical to US economic interests. But US public opinion was overwhelmingly
against entering the war. It now seems that FDR figured out a way to
get the US into the war, and that Pearl Harbor was the key to his plan.
When the Japanese began to threaten Southeast Asia, FDR froze Japanese
assets in US banks, resulting in a cutoff of Japanese oil supplies.
This was considered an act of war by Japan, and Japanese retaliation
was expected by American planners. As the Japanese fleet approached
Pearl Harbor, intelligence services in Britain and the US evidently
knew of that approach. British Prime Minister Churchill notified his
Pacific commanders that the Japanese were heading for Pearl Harbor.
FDR, on the other hand, did not notify his commanders. Instead, he sent
the most strategic ships (the aircraft carriers) out to sea where they
would be safe, and instructed key observation outposts on the island
of Kauai to stand down. It was over Kauai that the Japanese made their
approach to Pearl Harbor.
It seems that FDR intentionally set the stage for a ‘surprise’
attack – shocking the nation and instantly shifting public opinion
from non-interventionism to war frenzy. I am suggesting that this same
scenario must be considered in the case of the recent WTC and Pentagon
attacks. Unbelievable as this may seem, this is a scenario that matches
the modus operandi of US ruling elites. These elites show callous disregard
for civilian lives in Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and dozens of other
places around the world. Is it so surprising that they would sacrifice
a few thousand American civilians if they considered that necessary
in order to pursue their geopolitical objectives?
....
Pearl Harbor aroused the wrath of Americans against the Japanese...
but as soon as the blank check was signed, it was Europe that received
the initial focus of American military attention. After the Battleship
Maine was blown up (from an internal explosion we have since learned),
the thirst for revenge was translated into the imperialist capture of
the Philippines. In other words, when one of these outrage incidents
occurs, the modus operandi of the US elite is to pursue whatever objectives
are most important to it – regardless of the incident that provided
the blank check.
And the most important issue before the elite at this point in history
is the preservation of global elite rule, the acceleration of globalisation,
and the suppression of the anti-globalisation movement. They must deal
with the crisis of global capitalism.

in 1605 there was the so-called gunpowder plot against the British
parliament buildings. Now, now I’ll allow myself a digression
here because it shows just how conned we can be. It so happens that
my birthday is November the 5th. So I grew up knowing about Guy Fawkes
Day, which is November 5th. And I always knew the little rhyme “Remember,
remember the fifth of November/ Gunpowder, treason and plot.”
And I always assumed that there was a guy named Guy Fawkes who took
barrels of gunpowder under the bridge of parliament buildings in 1605
and tried to light them to blow up the parliament buildings against
to the detriment of the king.

And it turns out, I just learned a few months ago, that that was a
deception by King James. It was cooked up and Guy Fawkes was framed
and his co-conspirators, alleged co-conspirators, were frame and they
were hanged. And it was to aid the king in his wish for war with Spain
and to generally buttress his reign. And I’ve gone literally my
whole life not knowing about a deception pulled off by a ruler of old
. . . and I just didn’t know. And my son – last night I
phoned him and his did some checking on the internet – and the
official story about Guy Fawkes Day is still the one most people believe.

The Pearl Harbor attack was allowed
to happen (the US was intercepting Japanese
radio signals and codes and knew it was imminent) in order to
galvanize a divided nation to support world war. However, FDR did not
need to provide the Japanese Navy with technical assistance to ensure
the success of the attack.

September 11, 1941 was
the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Pentagon. 9/11
(the attack) happened on the 60th anniversary. The groundbreaking
was three months before Pearl Harbor, at a time when the US government
promised it was not going to get involved in war unless it was attacked
first. Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen. The US had intercepted the
Japanese radio traffic by decrypting their codes -- and Roosevelt knew
the attacks were imminent yet chose not to defend the base nor warn the
local commanders. Sacrificing over two thousand people was deemed an acceptable
price to pay for galvanizing a divided country to support World War. That
war was in many ways an oil war - the US was able to wage the war because
the American oil industry had recently reached the peak of domestic oil
discoveries and had enough oil to wage global war. In contrast, Germany,
Italy and Japan do not have oil, and eventually ran out of fuel to power
their war machines. Germany tried to capture the rich oil fields of the
Caucausus, but after the Stalingrad battle (on the way to the Caucaucus
region), it was clear that the Nazi mechanized military would lose the
war. Japan seized oil fields in Indonesia, but when they were driven out
they lost much of their oil supply for their military imperialist expansion,
and the US naval blockade of Japan ensured their defeat.

"Hitler and Goering had counted on the new jet fighters
driving the Allied air forces from the skies, and well they might have
-- for the Germans succeeded in producing more than a thousand of them
-- had the Anglo-American flyers, who lacked this plane, not taken successful
counteraction. The conventional Allied fighter was no match for the
German jet in the air, but few ever got off the ground. The
refineries producing the special fuel for them were bombed and destroyed
and the extended runways which had to be constructed for them were easily
detected by Allied pilots, who destroyed the jets on the ground."
-- William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (1962),
pp. 1426-7

Pearl Harbors, old and new

"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century took place today."
-- President George Walker Bush, diary entry, 11:30 pm, September 11,
2001

"Out of these troubled times, the New World Order can emerge."
-- President George Herbert Walker Bush, September 11, 1990

The Old Pearl Harbor

December 7, 1941 was the "Day that lived in infamy,"
the supposed sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor. Contrary to the official
myth, there is overwhelming evidence that President Roosevelt knew the
attacks were about to happen due to US decryption of Japanese communications.
The US had secretly made plans to enter the war, yet promised the public
that this would not happen unless the US was attacked first. The Army
and Navy commanders were later blamed for failing to prevent the attacks,
yet they had been kept out of the loop of the intelligence that the Japanese
were about to declare war on America, and therefore it wasn't really their
fault. There have not been any formal declarations of war by the Congress
on any other country since 1941 -- now, attacks by the empire are made
without pretense of constitutional obligation.

The New Pearl Harbor

September 11 was widely claimed to be a surprise attack
similar to Pearl Harbor. The psychological shock on the public galvanized
a divided nation to back efforts to engage in World War. 9/11 and Pearl
Harbor had roughly similar casualty figures (although nearly all 9/11
victims were civilian).

9/11, like Pearl Harbor, was a surprise to most in the
military, but key decision makers had foreknowledge. Specific warnings
came from at least 15 countries. At least five investigations into the
flight schools were impeded by FBI management, any one of which could
have prevented the attacks. Insider trading on American and United Airlines
in the week before the attack (betting the values of the stocks would
drop) showed foreknowledge among certain financial institutions, including
a firm whose former director was the Executive Director (number 3 position)
at the CIA on 9/11. Mainstream media accounts document that several political,
military and corporate leaders were warned not to fly or were moved out
of the way. The only remaining questions about 9/11 are the levels of
technical assistance provided by key parts of the Bush administration
to ensure the success of the attacks - the best analyses of these issues
are the books "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American
Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" by Michael Ruppert (www.fromthewilderness.com)
and "The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute,"
by Paul Thompson (www.cooperativeresearch.org).

"We need a new Pearl Harbor"

A year before 9/11, the Project for
a New American Century, a think tank composed of most of the key officials
of the Bush administration, wrote a report titled "Rebuilding America's
Defenses" that urged the US to take over the world, starting with
the oil rich areas of the Middle East. The PNAC's members stated that
this would probably require a "new Pearl Harbor" to enable.
The televised nature of the 9/11 images provided a form of "shock
and awe" broadcast world wide. It is obvious, yet uncomfortable to
acknowledge, that without 9/11, the PNAC's goals of taking over the Middle
East would have been impossible to accomplish. The psychological shock
of 9/11 -- not the false claims of Saddam Hussein's mythical Weapons of
Mass Destruction -- is what gave the Bush team the "political capital"
required for the seizure of Iraq's oil fields,
the second largest on Earth.

Two very good books on this topic:

"Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath," by John Toland Doubleday Books 1982

"Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor,"
by Robert B. Stinnett, Free Press, 1999

"My belief is that General Short and I were not given the information
available in Washington and were not informed of the impending attack
because it was feared that action in Hawaii might deter the Japanese
from making the attack. Our president had repeatedly assured the American
people that the United States would not enter the war unless we were
attacked. The Japanese attack on the fleet would put the United States
in the war with the full support of the American public." -- Admiral
Kimmel, 1958 interview

Almost the only consolation for the U.S. Navy was that none of its aircraft
carriers were present at Pearl Harbor on December 7. They were either
in the continental United States or delivering aircraft to U.S. island
bases elsewhere in the Pacific. ....
In London, Winston Churchill, who had based all his hope of a successful
outcome to the war on "dragging the Yanks in" was, since Britain's
expulsion from the European continent in 1940, almost the only person
at a high level of government in any of the nations at war, to see a silver
lining to the news. As he retired to bed on the evening of December 7,
he confided to himself "so we had won after all." ....
December 7, 1941, changed almost every important international relationship
in the world--to the disadvantage of the Axis (Germany-Japan-Italy) and
to the advantage of the Allies (United States-United Kingdom-Soviet Union),
which would dominate the world in subsequent years.

Operation
Northwoods

1962 Pentagon plan to attack US civilians that would be blamed on Castro's
Cuba to "justify" US invasion, made public knowledge four months before
9/11. It is not precisely the same scenario as 9/11, but there are some startling similarities.

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body
of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba
by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document,
titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”
was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March
13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to
a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale,
the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer
various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals
- part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose -
included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States,
developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami
area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including
“sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),”
faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting
a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship
in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford
himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt
plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

On 30 November 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) released the first
installment of previously classified information regarding the Vietnam
era, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin incident. This release includes a
variety of articles, chronologies of events, oral history interviews,
signals intelligence (SIGINT) reports and translations, and other related
memoranda.